The Secret to Lying (19 page)
Read The Secret to Lying Online
Authors: Todd Mitchell
I surveyed the mess. If I left it for later, I wouldn’t have anything to sleep on, so I pulled off all the wet bedding and headed for the laundry room.
Sunny was standing outside my door when I returned. “I don’t think he’s back yet,” I said, figuring that she was there to see Dickie.
“Okay if I hang out with you while I wait?”
“Sure. If you don’t mind the flood.”
She raised her eyebrows. I propped open the door and showed her the pile of mattresses and clothes in the shower.
“So
that’s
how you do laundry.”
“Very funny.” I wrung out a pair of boxers. “I think the Steves did it.”
“Look, James, if you’ve got a bed-wetting problem, that’s okay. You don’t have to blame it on someone else.” She giggled and patted my back.
I didn’t mind the teasing from Sunny. She never got mean about it, and she had a beautiful laugh. Being around her brightened my mood.
I draped my boxers over the shower rod to dry. Then I got some hangers out of my closet for the other clothes. The mattresses I propped against our bed frames to air out. Sunny gave me a hand, hanging my jeans and shirts.
“You don’t have to help,” I said.
She kept hanging things. “I don’t mind. Anyway, I feel a little guilty about all this.”
“Why?”
“I think I might have started this whole prank war thingy.”
“How?”
“I dated Steve Lacone at the beginning of the year.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope,” she said. “We only went out for a few days. Then I started hanging with you guys, which pissed Steve off.”
“Hold on. Is that why they pelted us with water balloons?”
“Probably.” Sunny draped a few wet socks over the shower bar.
I thought of the water balloon and shaving cream fight we’d had at the beginning of the year, right after I’d dyed my hair with Sunny. Anything had seemed possible then. “Okay,” I said, accepting that Sunny and Steve had dated. “So why’d you split up?”
“Don’t tell anyone this, but no matter what we did or where we went, Steve Dennon came with us.”
“That’s not a surprise. Steve Dennon worships Steve Lacone.”
“Yeah. But the weird thing is, one night Steve and I were by the pond, messing around . . .”
“Steve Lacone, right?”
Sunny slapped my shoulder. “Of course!”
“Just checking.”
“So we were making out,” she continued, “and Steve groaned,
Oh, Steve!
”
“Whoa!”
“No kidding. I didn’t know if he was saying,
Oh, Steve!
meaning himself, like he thought he was so great. Or if he was saying,
Oh, Steve!
like he was fantasizing about kissing Steve Dennon.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Nothing. But that was the last time I walked the pond with him. When a guy calls out someone else’s name in the heat of passion, even if it’s his own name, it’s not a good sign.”
I tried to imagine a situation where, in the heat of passion, I might gasp,
Oh, James!
“What about you?” Sunny asked. “What happened between you and Jess?”
“I think we broke up.”
“Uh . . . yeah. She said you turned into a suicidal maniac and crashed her dad’s car.”
“She told you that?”
“I heard her and Rachel talking in our commons earlier. She seemed kind of pissed.”
“Did she say anything else?” I asked, hoping that Jess hadn’t told anyone about my parents, or what a phony I was.
Sunny shook her head. “Not that I heard. You want to tell me about it?”
I wrung out a shirt and draped it over a hanger. In a way, it was a relief not to have to worry about impressing Jess anymore. “Guess I wanted to break up with her,” I said.
“So you crashed her car?”
“Uh-huh.”
Sunny stopped hanging clothes and leaned against the door frame. “If I dared you to do something, would you do it?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “But you have to promise me you’ll do it before I tell you what it is.”
“Why?”
“Promise me first.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you dare me to do?”
“Go see Chuck.”
I drew back, confused. “The shrink?”
Sunny nodded. “I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be.”
“I’m not the only one who’s worried. Dickie is, too.”
I scowled, annoyed that they’d been talking about me. “I’m the sanest person I know.”
Sunny put her hand on my arm. “You just crashed your girlfriend’s car to break up with her.”
“That was an accident.”
“What about these?” She turned my arm, exposing the cuts on the other side. “Are these accidents?”
I pulled away. “They’re nothing.”
“If they’re nothing, then why are you afraid to talk to Chuck?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Please,” Sunny urged. “I’ll go with you.”
“Fine,” I said. “If it means that much to you, I’ll go. Once.”
She gave me a huge, Sunny smile. “Thanks!” she said, and kissed my cheek.
THE FAINT SCENT OF COFFEE
drifted on the air. At first, that didn’t seem significant until I realized where I was — stuck in the dream again. I followed the scent to the diner where I’d first met the guides.
The place looked abandoned. All the windows had been broken, and the lights were out. Cobwebs tickled my face and glass shards crunched beneath my feet as I walked through the door. No waitress greeted me. I was about to leave when I saw something move.
It was a man with bushy white hair hunched at the counter. He turned over a mug beside him and filled it with steaming coffee from a thermos. “Might as well sit,” he said. “Drink it while it’s hot.”
I cupped the mug in my hands. Coffee grounds swirled around the top, but the smell was irresistible. “Got any sugar?” I asked.
“Nope,” the man said. “It’s coffee. It’s supposed to taste bitter.”
I took a sip, cringing.
“Thought you might come back here,” the man said. His face was tan, and wrinkles radiated around the corners of his eyes. I vaguely remembered him from my waking life.
“Liam?” I asked.
The man shrugged.
“You’re Liam,” I said. “Sage’s father. I met you at that picnic.”
“Call me what you like. It’s your show.” He sipped his coffee and nodded to himself. “You sure have made a mess of things, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t do this,” I said, glancing around the diner.
“That’s right. You’re not responsible for anything that’s happened, are you?” Liam turned to face me. “I saw you come here the first time, you know. You could have sat with anyone in the room. You had a choice then.” He rubbed the white stubble on his cheek. “Bet you didn’t even notice me.”
I shook my head.
“I was sitting right here when you came in.” He tapped the counter. “I’d even kept that stool empty for you.”
I thought back to the last time I’d been in the diner. Several figures had been at the counter, but I hadn’t given them much consideration.
“Yup. You chose them,” Liam continued. “You walked over to their booth and plopped down with them of your own free will. Why? Because she was pretty? Because he looked cool? Because you wanted to be like them?”
“I don’t know. They called me over.”
“Baloney.” Liam took a sip of his coffee and clanked the empty cup onto the saucer. “They didn’t call you over. You weren’t tricked into helping the Nomanchulators. You chose to do it.”
“I didn’t know who they were.”
“You didn’t want to know,” he said.
I lifted my coffee, then thought better of it and set the cup back down. The little I’d drunk burned like battery acid in my belly. “I’m so tired of this,” I muttered. “I hate being stuck here.”
“Then why don’t you leave?”
“I can’t leave. This city doesn’t end.”
“If you say so.”
“Hold on. Do you know a way out?”
“Naw. I’ve been here my whole life. But . . .”
“But what?”
“You haven’t.” He squinted at me. “Wherever you go, there you are, right, James?”
“So there’s a way out?”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree.” He unscrewed the thermos and refilled his cup. “The question you should be asking is how you got yourself into this mess. Figure that out, and you might be able to leave.”
I pushed away from the counter and stood.
“Good luck finding a way out of your own head,” Liam muttered. “’Cause that’s the pickle, isn’t it?”
IN PHYSICS, DR. CHOI ASSIGNED US
new lab groups for the spring semester. It was just my luck that I got put with Cheese, Muppet, and the Ice Queen.
We were supposed to pull our desks together and work on a problem set with our new groups. Cheese slumped in his seat as if it pained him to move, while Muppet scuttled about trying to get our desks to form a perfect square. Ellie seemed tired. There were faint shadows under her eyes that gave her a bruised look, but that didn’t stop her from being completely gorgeous. And stuck-up. As soon as I came over, she set her back to me, her perfect posture impenetrable as a wall.
Great,
I thought.
One more girl who hates me.
I didn’t know why
she
was pissed. If anyone should have been angry, it was me. After all, the last time I’d seen her, she was walking away, leaving me to freeze by the pond. At the very least, I thought she’d apologize for calling security and getting me suspended, instead of acting like my mere existence offended her.
Ellie asked Muppet how his break had been.
The poor kid got so nervous talking to her that he rambled on and on about the “blaring inconsistencies” in some alien invasion movie he’d seen. “And then,” he sputtered, “when the spaceships went by, there was this whooshing sound. Like there could be sound in space, when everyone knows waves don’t travel through a vacuum.” He laughed, as if he’d made a very funny joke.
“Exactly,” I said. “I was totally buying the fact that aliens were popping out of people’s bellies until the sound of the spaceships ruined it all.”
Ellie ignored my sarcasm. “You’re right. I hate it when movies do that,” she said to Muppet. Then she smiled at Cheese. “What about you, Cheese?” she asked, completely dissing me. “How was your break?”
I talked with Cheese about it on the way back to our dorm. “Ice Queen didn’t even say hello to me,” I said. “I mean, how stuck-up can you get?”
Cheese shrugged.
“I’m serious. Tell me you saw what I’m talking about. She totally hates me.”
“She’s just shy, man,” Cheese said. “That’s her thing.”
“She’s not shy about talking with you. Or Muppet.”
“We were in her chemistry group last semester. She knows us. Anyhow, what’s the big deal? Are you into her?”
“The Ice Queen?” I smirked. “No way. I just want our physics group to go well.”
“Of course. Physics.” Cheese swiped his ID across the dorm sensor so we could enter. “Like the study of parabolic curves. Or the heat produced from the friction between two bodies. I’m all about physics.”
“The fact that you’re trying to eroticize parabolic equations — that’s messed up.”
“Physics, biology, chemistry,” Cheese said, “it’s all sex.”
“You’re sick.”
“That’s my secret to success — relate everything to sex and suddenly it’s interesting. How else do you stay awake when Ms. Krup drones on about covalent bonds?” He unlocked the door to his room and yawned. The shades were drawn, and the stuffy air smelled vaguely of rotting food and sweaty sneakers. “I’m gonna take a nap,” Cheese said, pushing a pile of dirty clothes off his mattress.
“Dude, you’re always sleeping.”
“It’s my hobby.”
Cheese dropped his backpack onto a pizza box and flopped into bed. I lingered by the door. “Do you remember your dreams?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said.
“What are they like?”
“Strange . . . good . . . dirty . . . They’re dreams, man.”